Crossroads
by LivexxLove
Summary: Seventeen year old Ally Dawson's life get's turned upside down when her wealthy family's safety is put on the line. Having her parents hide in a distant country, Ally is forced to live with a guardian, with a life without luxury.With the help of a boy, can she finally realize that there's more to life than diamonds and show?...And find the true meaning of love?
1. Mortal Enemies

**I'm back, everyone! I really hope you guys like this one better, I worked so hard for it. Don't worry; the storyline wasn't altered too much. Just a little. Please do read and review. I really care about your feedback. xoxo**

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Perfect hair, rich, a gorgeous figure with looks to match… you could use these words to describe seventeen year old Allison Dawson, who lived in a mansion in the south of Miami; usually without the company of her parents. Yeah she's popular, has friends, and living the life almost every girl basically wants… but as usual in every story, everyone has their own flaws.

Ally Dawson screams at a pitch high enough to break glass. "Ingrid! Why isn't my breakfast on my plate?!"

The cook shifts uncomfortably, slightly annoyed. "Because I haven't made it yet, ma'am"

"And why is that?" Ally pushes on, intent on wrecking the other's composure.

"I'll get right on it"

"Yes you will. Make it crepes please" She might have accidentally on purpose picked up the polished porcelain plate with her thumb and index finger and let it drop to the floor. Ingrid flinches, startled at the deafening sound it produced while it shattered to tens of pieces, slightly chipping the tiled kitchen floor. "Oops" Ally puts on a sickly fake smile before leaving the kitchen, and an enraged Ingrid.

Getting to her room in the big mansion wasn't something to fret over. It was just on the second floor of the house, right above her head. The teenager scurries up the marble staircase, not wasting barely a second to slam her bedroom door behind her, different shades of pink and purple invading her eyelids. She wavered to and fro through space fast enough to start a draft, brainstorming what she'd wear that day. This was going to be her first day in the senior year at her school, and she'd stop at nothing to impress once again. Best Friends or not, Cassidy Simms and Brooke O'Clare can be as venomous as a rattlesnake if you get them to be. It doesn't even matter if their grounds are against you. On the other hand, it wouldn't hurt to impress her boyfriend, Dallas Centineo, and all her other admirers that may be watching.

Ally finally decides on a ruffled sleeve top and a floral print mini-skirt. She throws in her signature brown designer boots to jazz things up a bit. Problem is, she isn't feeling up to getting them all out, so she summons up a maid.

Face back to the door which she hears click open and shut behind her, she calls, "Coco? Is that you?"

"It's Cecilia, Miss. But you can call me Ce-" the servant tries to correct but is cut off by a dismissal wave of perfectly manicured fingers.

"I can't find the outfit I'm looking for" She barges. "Did you get my laundry mixed up again?" She ignores the fact that if she actually checked, she'd surely find it in the organized closet.

"I d-don't know, Miss" Cecelia struggles with her words. "I'll check myself just to be sure. What are you looking for exactly?"

The teenage girl rolls her eyes, clearly bored with the conversation. "Ruffled sleeve top, my miniskirt- the one with the flowers on it- and brown boots"

This time she doesn't wait for the maid to answer her again before disappearing into the open bathroom door.

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Breakfast should have been a whole lot better, putting aside the fact of her parents' absence at the table, and the almost thick silence that enveloped around her. Notice how I used 'almost'?

As she picks up her fork her ears also pick up the sound of indistinct low chatter, precisely across her from the small circle of maids in her company. Chatter that wasn't low enough for comfort. The words 'spoiled brat', 'stuck up snob', 'pain in the butt' were very much audible. The helps weren't exactly skilled in the art of whispering.

Filled with raw rage, Ally uses her wrist to swipe across wherever she could reach at the table she sat at, sending down a clear glass of orange juice, a flower vase, and none other than a plate of crepes with barely a bite taken out of them. "SHUT UP!" She screams at the top of her lungs, eyeballing the trio. Faster than lightening, Ally leaves the room and goes out the front door, her eyes meeting with the chauffeur wearing that all too familiar black bowler hat.

"You're ready already, Miss?" he opens the backseat of the Porsche politely.

The girl huffs, striding to the open car door, "Obviously"

Her parents don't take her to school. They barely even see each other at all. The cause was between them going to work really early and coming back extremely late, loads of business trips, and their highly parasitic relationship as a family. She didn't really have the best relationship with them. Or at all, even.

The large crafted iron gates open as the car exits their villa and rides on into the normal world. She wonders if she's ready for the senior year. If the way she envisioned it in her imagination would actually become reality. You tend to imagine a lot of things when you're nerve-wrecked. Her fingers absent-mindedly tangle themselves in a thick lock of her hair, twirling and twirling and twirling around.

The car stops abruptly, forcing her to blink away shades of daydream from her eyes. She looks out the tainted window shield, seeing dozens of students loiter around the grounds and filing into the building.

"We're here, Miss" the older man informs, tipping his hat forward with curtsy and getting out to open her side of the car.

Ally takes her right leg out first, which is soon followed by her left. She walks carefully, counting her steps one after the other, intent on not reliving the face plant she had back in Middle School unto to cold rough pavement. It had taken months to get over the humiliation. But footstep counting was really irrelevant since Cassidy and Brooke countered her, nearly knocking her over. It almost seemed like they'd been hiding behind the columns like predators stalking their prey.

"It took you long enough" Brooke huffs, flipping her mustard brown hair over her shoulder.

"Sorry about that" Ally makes a weak apology, re-decorating her lips with a fresh layer of shimmery lip-gloss.

"No more time wasting" Cassidy's clear blue eyes almost bulge out of her forehead. "I hope you haven't forgotten we have tradition to fulfill"

The formal mention of tradition had the group leader dazed for a minute, but her features are soon drawn to a knowing smirk. There's this supermodel runway impersonation thing they've always been doing on the first day of school in the hallway since the sophomore year, when they hit the top of the food chain. They've been marked for it already. "How could I forget?" Ally makes the first move through the school double doors and her group follow suit.

The process happens almost automatically. As soon as those doors swung in that overly dramatic way, all the students in the hall, particularly juniors, had the way cleared for Marino's much known aristocratic females. Well, all except one.

This brave boy with a navy blue hoodie tests Ally's patience when he passes by her, nudging her body forward so sharply she almost tripped. Numbered gasps sound through the walls dozens of eyes peering at the queen, expecting her to do something.

"Hey! Didn't you see us standing right there?" She demands, a scowl crowding up her face.

The boy turns his head care freely, only a mocking smirk visible through the hood. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure I did"

She almost chokes on her own spit.

A light chuckle breaks in the crowd, then another, and three others, until the hall has turned into a laughing mass. Dozens of laughs… all directed at her. It was middle school all over again.

She watches the boy get mixed in with the crowd until he was out of sight with clear disgust. "Who's that?" Her attention is drawn back to the two standing with her.

Brooke gives a wide-eyed stare and Cassidy shrugs her shoulders. "I don't know" she says obliviously.

Ally purses her lips so tight they morph into a thin line. She opens her mouth to say something spiteful but is cut off by the bell. She sighs instead. "I have to go now. I've got English"

One of the two nods and the other flips her streaked blonde hair. "Bye" she says.

Ally wrestles through the swarm of teenagers, who seemed to be playing a game of tug of war with her. She is almost out of breath when she finally gets to her class. Heaven knows why they haven't put hall-surfing as a certified sport in the Olympics. The seat beside hers is empty; the one that was previously occupied by Susan Fisher, a weird little nutshell in her own world. She hoped this year she'd be given a better selection of a seat neighbor. The teacher, Mrs. Halles makes an entrance almost immediately.

"Okay, class. I welcome you to a new school year at Marino High" she begins with this chirpy sing-song tone of hers. "I hope you all already know this year is going to be very different. You'll be doing you SAT's, filling forms for your future colleges…" She stops seeing our bored and blank expressions. "Anyway, I'd like to introduce you all to our new exchange student"

A tall boy, around six feet or so, enters the class, wearing an all too familiar dark blue hoodie.

"Please do pull down your hoodie so they see you properly" Mrs. Halles tells him, but he pretends not to hear. She eventually has to stand on her tip toes and pull it off herself. A mess of shaggy straw-blonde hair is revealed, along with a pair of light hazel eyes and a not so friendly frown. "Do you mind introducing yourself?" She whisper-coaxes him, but he ignores again. The teacher forces a fake smile. "His name is Austin Moon, and he will be spending the rest of the year with us. Anyone want to say hello to Austin?" Ally wasn't sure if it was the class' lack of enthusiasm or the death wish Austin was granting them that made them stay silent, but they were either way. Mrs. Halles gives up the Sunshine act, clearly frustrated. "Go find a seat" she tells Austin gesturing to the rest of the class.

Ally watches his gaze waver through the class, until they rest on the empty seat beside her, then it shifts a little to the left and rests on her. Their looks of disgust to each other were almost identical. He looks back at the empty seat and takes another reassuring glance through the class for another empty seat. Unfortunately, there were none.

Mrs. Halles frowns. "Go sit down. I have to begin my lesson"

And Ally silently curses herself as he walks over and sits on the desk next to her. Right now, she would be more than willing for a switch back with Susan Fisher.

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**That's it for now. Love you lots. Please don't forget to review!**

**xoxo**


	2. Hi, Partner

**Okay I'm back. I got only one review (to be honest that affected my self-esteem) I even wanted to stop the story, but then I remembered that I got 1 review! At least ****one ****person liked the story and that's enough. Her ID is 'Ross's Juliet' and check out her stories, they're awesome! Thanks a lot, girlfriend! (I've summed it in my head that only girls are on this website. Boys are too shallow for voluntary reading) Disclaimer: I do not own Austin and Ally**

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Today should have been like any other normal day for him. Well, almost. As the new kid the day would be anything but normal, but he'd tried to blend in. He tried talking to a few people, starting conversations here and there, but he couldn't put himself together when those three Barbie dolls strutted through the halls like they owned the place. Is that what they really do at this school? What really had him more surprised was the way everybody else seems to fall at their feet. There's one thing Austin Moon doesn't like and that's being intimidated.

He constructed a plan in his head, which involved raining on their parade and enraging the girl in the middle who looked like their leader. And he'd gotten away with it cleanly… well not until first period that had him rethinking it all. Sitting next to his new mortal enemy for the rest of the year was not part of his plan. Not at all. And she doesn't look too keen of the idea either.

The teacher, who had introduced herself as Mrs. Halles, talks to him very straight forwardly. "Mr. Moon would you mind staying for the lesson, or spending your next two periods for you to get acquaintance with our lovely school."

Austin weighs the pros and cons in his head briefly. At the time, anything beat spending a whole period with the Barbie doll next to him. "Tour" he replies breezily, swinging one hand of his backpack over his right shoulder and standing up.

Mrs. Holles clasps her hands in front of the class. "Who'd like to volunteer to show Austin around?"

He watches the Barbie doll slump lower in her seat when she says this, pretending to read a textbook. He's almost a goner until a tall ginger slowly stands up.

"I'll do it" he says, but Austin can't focus on any other thing than his clearly color blind outfit.

"Thank you, Dez" Mrs. Halles hands them hall passes. "Don't goof around" she warns sternly, the smile on her face long gone.

Dez smiles a mile wide and takes the passes. "We won't"

Austin's the first to exit into the hall. He pulls his hood back up and goes ahead, not really counting on a conversation. But the ginger couldn't be any more oblivious.

"Hey! Wait for me!" He cries, jogging into step with him. "Woah, I almost lost you"

Austin tugs his hood lower waiting for him to take a hint.

Dez pauses "You don't like it here, do you?"

Finally.

…But today's his first day, and he doesn't want to come off as that dark shady guy that hates everything and everyone. He needed to make new friends, and right now there didn't seem like a better choice than the boy standing in front of him. "Not necessarily." He starts, keeping his voice in a low mumble. "I just really hate change, y'know?" He wondered if Dez could actually relate to what he was saying.

"I get it" the redhead counters. "We've all been new once"

Okay, the ginger was a competent conversationist.

"Is this how this school runs anyway?" Austin asks him, his mind drawn back to his encounter with the life-size Barbie doll.

"How?"

"Y'know, that girl… the one that walks around like she owns the place. And her two munchkins"

Dez squints hard. "Oh, you must be talking about Ally Dawson"

The other boy raises a brow. "That's her name?"

"Yeah, and her 'munchkins' by the way" he suggests with air quotes, "Are her friends, Brooke and Cassidy." He pauses. "They pretty much rule the school. They're like the royalty of the place, and everyone's expected to respect them."

"Ally Dawson's queen, let me guess?"

"Yes. And she even has a king too"

"Don't you mean boyfriend?"

Dez rolls his eyes. "Whatever lets you sleep at night"

They pass a room that looks like the gym.

"It's almost like this school has its own autocratic system."

"Yeah, and whatever it is, it seems that we're at the bottom"

Austin frowns. He really wasn't planning on being one of the 'outcasts' or as you can have it, 'social rejects'. He wasn't planning on befriending a probably color blind ginger either, but things happen. "Do you have any friends?"

"I got you, don't I?" Dez flashes a cheeky grin.

Austin furrows his eyebrows. "No, I mean any _other _friends" He ignores the fact that he was already classified as the redhead's _friend_.

"Well, not really. But I do know a Latina. We're not that close, but at least we can get some words across each other."

The blonde boy nods.

The two stop in front of wooden double doors at the hall's end.

"This, is the cafeteria" Dez sighs dramatically.

Austin peers in through the narrow glass windows. "What about it?"

The taller boy clutches his chest as if he'd just been stabbed. "Well it's only one of the most important rooms in the school"

"They serve fried chicken?"

"No! No! That's not it" Dez yelps, frustrated. "The lunch tables are graded according the social strata…"

The blonde boy looks at him like he's grown a second head. What is this, Ancient Greece?

Dez fails to notice. "That there is the popular table" he points to a neat table close to the air conditioners in the better half of the room. "That's the Goth table" a table with black decorated with permanent black marker and knife chippings comes into sight. "Home of the toughest emos"

"Which one is our table?"

The ginger frowns through the glass, his eyes pointing at a table in the corner of the lunch hall, at a not so reasonable distance from the trash cans.

"The loser table?"

He nods, tearing his attention from the cafeteria. "There are other places I want you to see, too." Dez starts to walk again before his neon orange sneakers come to a halt in front of a not so discreet door. "This is the music room" he says, turning the knob open.

Austin feels his heartbeat rate quicken up a bit at the mention of music. He may not look like the kind of person to be fond of it, but he was. In fact fondness was an understatement. He was _obsessed_. Music was his life, right from time. Or at least how far he could remember. He steps into the room slowly, recognizing almost every type of instrument that adorned the walls and the floors. A piano, some guitars, electric and acoustic, a drum set, flutes, piccolos, trumpets and even the one that has the triangle thingy with the stick.

Dez turns to the door. "I don't think you'll be interested in all these things though. Let me show you a few more places"

Austin loos longingly at the room before closing the door shut. Yeah, he'll be there a lot of times.

* * *

Ally Dawson slams her fist against the lunch table. "Can you believe the nerve of that boy?" She raves over lunch, causing a small tomato to roll off her salad and unto the table.

Her two friends look at her blankly. Cassidy rolls her eyes. "What about him?"

Dallas drops by at the table early enough to pick up the conversation. "What boy?" he looks at Ally pleadingly. "I hope it's not me. Are you mad at me?"

The girl sighs. "No it's not you. It's that new exchange student in my English class"

"What about him?" He perfectly echoes Cassidy, who is smirking silently.

It's Ally's turn for an eye-roll. "He totally embarrassed me this morning. And for one thing, I think he's out to get me"

Dallas knits his eyebrows together. "Don't you think you're overreacting just a little too much?"

Ally groans, very annoyed with everybody's lack of enthusiasm in her problem.

"My bad" the boy counts on his last chance to please his girlfriend. "Anyway, I want to ask you a very important question"

"Is this about the fridge light, again?"

Dallas forces a grin. "No, no. And we promised you wouldn't be letting anyone know about that" his anxious eyes dart to the other giggling girls at the table. "The opening game's this Saturday, and I was wondering if you wanted to come"

Sports were the least of Ally's fascinations, but she couldn't deny him. "Sure, it's a date"

"Great. I'll see you there" Dallas is waving at her as he walks away, but she's focused on something else in the room. _Someone_ else if you want to be extra precise.

Austin Moon stakes a French fry with his fork at the other end of the room, sitting in the company of a redhead with absolutely no sense of fashion and another short girl with hair wilder than any jungle and clothes that looked like they were taken from Animal Planet. Austin turns his head at a particularly bad timing, his light brown eyes meeting hers.

The girl takes the opportunity to scowl at him but the boy ignores her with a shrug and turns his attention back to the greasy pile of fried potatoes. This makes her even madder.

"Hey, Ally", she thinks she hears Brooke saying, "I heard there's this fall sale at the mall today. I know you two are absolutely dying to go!"

Cassidy exaggerates a squeal. "I never thought I'd see the day you'd have any good idea, Brooke!"

"Thanks?" The confused girl is unsure of herself.

"We'll go alright" Ally replies, but her stare is still across the room.

She'd make him pay, yes she would.

Lunch passes by more than quickly with fifth period up its tail. That meant science was next. Ally had barely gotten a morsel of food into her stomach, since she'd spent half of lunch loathing at Austin and the other half complaining and pounding the table, causing bits of food to fly off her plate one after the other. It's a wonder how after all that temperament, the table was still able to stay in one piece.

She walks quickly to the science lab since she's already wasted about five minutes gussying up in the bathroom. No one wants to get their head bitten off by Mr. Conely. He's the science teacher who is very obsessed with punctuality… and if you count it, chocolate coated donuts from Dunkin's. Ally stealthily enters the class, trying her best not to get noticed by him, and places her weight gingerly on the closest high stool.

The teacher is scrawling something on the board, with very bad handwriting. From now on, there will be no talking, standing, walking, scraping of seats, whispering, cellular use, note-passing… Ally waited for him to also cancel rights on breathing too.

The incessant sound of a pencil clicking against the table begins to flood into her ears. Irked, she turns her head sideways. "Do you mind?"

The boy turns his head too, and though he is wearing a hoodie it's not hard for her to recognize him. Sitting beside her is none other than...

Austin Moon.

**Thank you so much for reading! I'd really appreciate you'd review; it makes all the hassle worth it. Thanks for those who followed and favorite too. You guys are awesome! I hope I see you soon, don't forget to review!**

**Xoxo Cathy**


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